Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I do not agree with the representation that Deputy Bruton puts on these matters. It is popular to suggest, for example, that the report to which he refers demonstrates that e-Government has been a failure. Of course the report does no such thing. No objective observer could describe the story of e-Government in Ireland as one of failure. To do so is to denigrate the valuable work of those who have delivered the excellent projects I have mentioned, and many others. It would be to set a standard for the public service that in Government ICT projects anything less than unequivocal and total success is failure, a standard that in reality no one seeking to deliver any ICT project in the public or the private sector could accept.

This is not to say there have not been some difficulties and challenges. Some things did take longer than would have been hoped at the outset and some things did cost more than originally expected. We are dealing here with the fact that there is no easy set of solutions.

The report highlights a number of what it describes as cost overruns. In interpreting those, I sound a note of caution for Deputies. Many of the budgets and estimated outturns as quoted in the report relate to different matters. For example, in some cases the budget relates to pilot developments whereas the expected outturns relate to full development, implementation and operation. In others, the budget relates to single year estimates, whereas the estimated outturns relate to multi-year expenditure. In numerous projects the scope was changed from that originally envisaged because the analysts found opportunities to do more or to implement additional process efficiencies or had to deal with changes in legislation or the international environment that resulted in increases in costs over those for which they had originally budgeted. Such is the nature of e-government. This is something that is common across all countries attempting to improve public services in this way.

See this speech in context